[_ Old Earth _] Cosmos rebooted

[Vaccine]

Anyone been watching this series with Neil Degrasse-Tyson? I liked Tyson on all the Nova shows and other PBS shows but lately he seems to have an axe to grind with Christianity.


"I was struck in the first episode where [Tyson] talked about science and how, you know, all ideas are discussed, you know, everything is up for discussion -- it's all on the table -- and I thought to myself, 'No, consideration of special creation is definitely not open for discussion, it would seem," said Faulkner.

"Tyson provided an example involving a hypothetical discussion on the spherical Earth with NASA and providing equal time to people who still believe in a 'flat Earth'."
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/4...ysons-cosmos-give-airtime-to-creationists.htm


I was disappointed to see him equating creationists with people who still believe in a flat earth. It shows how little he knows about creationists or how little he thinks of other scientists with that viewpoint. Either way it makes the comment "everything is up for discussion" extremely disingenuous.

In the 1st episode he brought up the heretic Giordano Bruno as an example of a scientist that got burned at the stake. That sure set of a flurry of articles. He wasn't a scientist and it was his religious ideas that got him in trouble. I thought Tyson was a smart guy, it doesn't seem he thought this through very well.

 

[Barbarian]

Anyone been watching this series with Neil Degrasse-Tyson? I liked Tyson on all the Nova shows and other PBS shows but lately he seems to have an axe to grind with Christianity.

He seems to think creationism = Christianity. Bad assumption.

"I was struck in the first episode where [Tyson] talked about science and how, you know, all ideas are discussed, you know, everything is up for discussion -- it's all on the table -- and I thought to myself, 'No, consideration of special creation is definitely not open for discussion, it would seem," said Faulkner.

No more than geocentrism is open for discussion. For the same reasons.

"Tyson provided an example involving a hypothetical discussion on the spherical Earth with NASA and providing equal time to people who still believe in a 'flat Earth'."
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/4...ysons-cosmos-give-airtime-to-creationists.htm

There are few creationists these days who are still thinking of a flat Earth. But one such gave Wallace (co-discoverer of natural selection) endless trouble over it. It's a dead issue, even with creationists now, but it wasn't always that way.

I was disappointed to see him equating creationists with people who still believe in a flat earth.

It probably would be better to have used geocentrism. There still are a good number of creationists who are geocentrists. The point to Luther's and Calvin's cites of scripture "proving" that the Earth does not move, and the Sun moves around it.

It shows how little he knows about creationists or how little he thinks of other scientists with that viewpoint. Either way it makes the comment "everything is up for discussion" extremely disingenuous.

Some things, like creationism, geocentrism, and a flat Earth, are just not supportable in any way. But yeah, not everything is up for discussion, or should be. Otherwise,we'd be arguing about why retrograde motion isn't a better way to describe the orbit of Mars.

 

[Vaccine]

There still are a good number of creationists who are geocentrists.

Care to cite your source for that? Perhaps you meant galactocentric since many creationists prefer a bounded model of the universe. The cosmic microwave background radiation dipole anisotropy (aka axis of evil by atheists) is best explained by a bounded model of the universe.

Some things, like creationism, geocentrism, and a flat Earth, are just not supportable in any way.

People haven't believed in a flat Earth for over 600 years and in geocentrism in almost 400 years now, lumping creation with those is just absurd. Imagine how ridiculous it would be to not allow Catholics equal time based on the premise they burn people at the stake. Absurd. It's like trying to discredit modern medicine because surgeons originally didn't wash their hands, used mercury to treat syphilis, bloodletting and other such tripe. If the best argument Tyson (and others) can come up with against creationists amounts to making fun of them, I think that says a lot about him and others that use that tactic. It actually works against them in the long run. Logic and reason are the tools a scientist would use to convince people. Ridicule and censoring are the tools of oppression. It would seem he dismisses creation, not because he knows so much about it, rather he's afraid to find out more about it.

 

[Barbarian]

Creationist may steal the spotlight for now by convincing a name like Bill Nye to a debate, but don’t blink or you might miss the next anti-science circus: The Principle movie (see trailer below), which is (in part) a defense of geocentrism.

You read that correctly: a documentary that defends geocentrism. It has been a while since a poll has been done on geocentric beliefs, but a 1999 Gallup found that 18 percent of Americans held to geocentrism. In 2011, a survey of Russians found that 32 percent were geocentrists. And now, there is a movie.
http://www.discardedimage.com/?p=6993

Four out of Five Americans Know Earth Revolves Around Sun
Probing a more universal measure of knowledge, Gallup also asked the following basic science question, which has been used to indicate the level of public knowledge in two European countries in recent years: "As far as you know, does the earth revolve around the sun or does the sun revolve around the earth?" In the new poll, about four out of five Americans (79%) correctly respond that the earth revolves around the sun, while 18% say it is the other way around.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/3742/new-poll-gauges-americans-general-knowledge-levels.aspx

These folks are merely accepting the premise of YE creationism, and applying it to all of Scripture.

People haven't believed in a flat Earth for over 600 years

Most educated people knew it wasn't flat for over 2500 years. However:

The Flat Earth Society (also known as the International Flat Earth Society or the International Flat Earth Research Society) is an organization whose aim to further the idea that the Earth is flat instead of an oblate spheroid. The modern organization was founded by Englishman Samuel Shenton in 1956[1] and was later led by Charles K. Johnson, who based the organization in his home in Lancaster, California. The formal society was inactive after Johnson’s death in 2001 but was resurrected in 2004 by its new president Daniel Shenton..The Flat Earth Society recruited members by attacking the United States government and all of its agencies, particularly NASA. Much of the society’s literature in its early days focused on interpreting the Bible literally to mean that the Earth is flat, although they did attempt to offer scientific explanations and evidence..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society

and in geocentrism in almost 400 years now

See above. Granted, most creationists aren't flat earthers, or geocentrists. But they still exist. They simply take inerrancy seriously for all of the Bible.

lumping creation with those is just absurd.

True, but creation and creationism are like science and scientism. Two entirely different things.

Imagine how ridiculous it would be to not allow Catholics equal time based on the premise they burn people at the stake.

Of course, given the fact that they did it less than Protestants. (the popularity of burning witches in Northern Europe after the Reformation, you know; Kepler's mother was almost burned, because she was a healer, whom the university-trained physicians saw as unwelcome competition)
Read Hugh Trevor-Roper's The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.

It's like trying to discredit modern medicine because surgeons originally didn't wash their hands

See above. What sort of surgeon doesn't wash his hands now?
(edited for formattting issue)

 

[Sparkey]

"The earth does not go around the sun...."

View attachment 4256

 

[Vaccine]

Granted, most creationists aren't flat earthers, or geocentrists.

Precisely. So there's no reason for Degrasse-Tyson to label creationists like that. When he said "everything's on the table", creationists had in mind to discuss the even distribution of matter, the cosmic microwave background radiation dipole anisotropy, the general flatness of the universe, not a flat Earth. I think it was Degrasse-Tyson's intention to keep the conversation about irrelevant topics like that instead of discussing an unbounded view of the universe as opposed to a bounded one. Well played Neil, well played.

 

[Barbarian]

He's just pointing out that creationism is slowly changing and becoming more consistent with reality. There are fewer flat Earthers and geocentrists than there were even a decade ago. And many creationists are now admitting the reality of speciation, even the evolution of higher taxa. It's a slow process, but it's working.

Care to cite your source for that? Perhaps you meant galactocentric since many creationists prefer a bounded model of the universe. The cosmic microwave background radiation dipole anisotropy (aka axis of evil by atheists) is best explained by a bounded model of the universe.

The problem for creationists in that regard is that the background was predicted by the big bang theory. And then there's the fact that the anisotropy clears up a former problem in the Big Bang theory:

The glow is very nearly uniform in all directions, but the tiny residual variations show a very specific pattern, the same as that expected of a fairly uniformly distributed hot gas that has expanded to the current size of the universe. In particular, the spectral radiance at different angles of observation in the sky contains small anisotropies, or irregularities, which vary with the size of the region examined. They have been measured in detail, and match what would be expected if small thermal variations, generated by quantum fluctuations of matter in a very tiny space, had expanded to the size of the observable universe we see today. This is a very active field of study, with scientists seeking both better data (for example, the Planck spacecraft) and better interpretations of the initial conditions of expansion. Although many different processes might produce the general form of a black body spectrum, no model other than the Big Bang has yet explained the fluctuations. As a result, most cosmologists consider the Big Bang model of the universe to be the best explanation for the CMB.

The high degree of uniformity throughout the observable universe and its faint but measured anisotropy lend strong support for the Big Bang model in general and the ΛCDM model in particular. Moreover, the WMAP[9] and BICEP[10] experiments have observed coherence of these fluctuations on angular scales that are larger than the apparent cosmological horizon at recombination. Either such coherence is acausally fine-tuned, or cosmic inflation occurred.[11][12]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background

The angular power spectrum of the anisotropy of the CMB contains information about the formation of the Universe and its current contents. This angular power spectrum is a plot of how much the temperature varies from point to point on the sky (the y-axis variable) vs. the angular frequency ell (the x-axis variable).
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CMB-DT.html

Apparently, the dipole "issue" was a sort of a trap for creationists, set up by a blogger here:
In fact in some ways the main reason I wrote about it was to point out that no one was writing about it. Especially layman critics of the Big Bang theory, mostly the religiously inspired. I mean, here’s some real strong ammo to use to discredit the Big Bang theory, and yet none of the critics is apparently even aware of it? Which illustrates that most critics of standard accepted theories are coming from an ideological point rather than logical one. You’d think that if one was going to debate a point, one would at least familiarize themself (sic) with the topic.
http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/the-axis-of-evil-the-cmbr-dipole-anisotropy/

 

[Vaccine]

He's just pointing out that creationism is slowly changing and becoming more consistent with reality.

The westboro baptists aren't representative of christianity any more than flat earthers are representative of creationists. I wish Degrasse-Tyson would conduct himself with more humility, grace, and compassion. There are many Creationist with PhD's. They're not saying Degrasse-Tyson is wrong, they're just saying there are other explanations that fit just as well as theirs. I also think scientists are becoming more consistent with the bible.

"He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in." Isaiah 40:22
"He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea" Job 9:8

The problem for creationists in that regard is that the background was predicted by the big bang theory.

There are many creationists that accept the big bang theory (me included) so it isn't really a problem. Of course, they reject Atheist cosmological models stemming from the BBT in favor of Biblical cosmological models. I think the media just likes to inflate any contrasts there.
An interesting thing about the background predicted by the BBT. It was predicted to be smooth. When the COBE results came in it was what they predicted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PIA16874-CobeWmapPlanckComparison-20130321.jpg

However, newer and better equipment (WMAP and Planck) revealed more detail for the cosmic microwave background radiation. That large scale smooth (homogeneous) background they predicted is actually not smooth on a large scale (inhomogeneous) or isotropic on a large scale. Statistically it smooths out, but statistically our galaxy is the center of the universe. This doesn't meant the BBT is wrong, it just means the unbounded (no clear edge or center) model that relied on homogeneity and isotropy is wrong has a lot of problems. Inhomogeneity and anisotropy is actually consistent with a bounded (distinct edge and center) model. The only analogy I can think of is how scientists in Darwin's day believed cells were simple because when they looked through a microscope, eukaryotes at least, looked like a fried egg with a clear nucleus, wall and cytoplasm. With better equipment, today we know cells have many more features and are extremely complex.

And then there's the fact that the anisotropy clears up a former problem in the Big Bang theory

There's no former problem this new one clears up that I'm aware of. The part about "no other model" is misleading. There are many "models" of the BBT, they don't say which one is the best. The creationist ones have less assumptions.
That article explains the anisotropy, but it didn't even address the dipole anisotropy. The issue isn't the irregularities, the issue is those "irregularities" are not randomly aligned. If those irregularities were random there would be no special place in the universe. But they actually line up to form a plane, dipole anisotropy is the issue. Not only do these large scale irregularities line up but their axis is lined up with our solar system, thus the axis of evil. This suggests us having a special place in the universe. The evidence is consistent with a bounded (distinct edge and center) model of the universe but creates fatal problems for unbounded models.

The high degree of uniformity throughout the observable universe and its faint but measured anisotropy lend strong support for the Big Bang model in general and the ΛCDM model in particular. Moreover, the WMAP[9] and BICEP[10] experiments have observed coherence of these fluctuations on angular scales that are larger than the apparent cosmological horizon at recombination. Either such coherence is acausally fine-tuned, or cosmic inflation occurred.[11][12]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background

Someone should update that part about a high degree of uniformity, it isn't accurate:
the “cosmological principles” were, I fear, dogmas that should not have been proposed.
The cosmological principle implies that at a sufficiently large scale, the universe is homogeneous; different places will appear similar to one another. Whilst Yadav et al have suggested a maximum scale of 260/h Mpc for structures within the universe according to this heuristic, other authors have suggested values as low as 60/h Mpc.[11] Yadav's calculation suggests that the maximum size of a structure can be about 370Mpc[12]

The Clowes–Campusano LQG, discovered in 1991, has a length of 580 Mpc, and is marginally larger than the consistent scale.

The Sloan Great Wall, discovered in 2003, has a length of 423 Mpc,[13] which is only just consistent with the cosmological principle.

U1.11, a large quasar group discovered in 2011, has a length of 780 Mpc, and is two times larger than the upper limit of the homogeneity scale.

The Huge-LQG, discovered in 2012, is three times longer than, and twice as wide as is predicted possible according to these current models, and so challenges our understanding of the universe on large scales.

In November 2013, a new structure 10 billion light years wide has been discovered, the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall, putting further doubt on the validity of the cosmological principle.[1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle

The part about acausally fine-tuned or inflation is misleading as well. Basically, they're saying either way we know God had nothing to do with it. Acausally fine-tuned, implies special knowledge of any fine-tuning. They're asserting if there was any fine-tuning, it's a coincidence. Inflation invokes even more fine-tuning than without it.

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" Psalm 19:1

Apparently, the dipole "issue" was a sort of a trap for creationists, set up by a blogger here:
In fact in some ways the main reason I wrote about it was to point out that no one was writing about it. Especially layman critics of the Big Bang theory, mostly the religiously inspired. I mean, here’s some real strong ammo to use to discredit the Big Bang theory, and yet none of the critics is apparently even aware of it? Which illustrates that most critics of standard accepted theories are coming from an ideological point rather than logical one. You’d think that if one was going to debate a point, one would at least familiarize themself (sic) with the topic.
http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/the-axis-of-evil-the-cmbr-dipole-anisotropy/

It seems to me the gist of this guys post is he's annoyed by ignorant people who object to the big bang theory but know nothing about it. He adds if they were really smart they would object on scientific ground, namely the CMBR dipole anisotropy. Creationists did that in 2006.

http://creation.mobi/cmb-conundrums

On the one hand, I suppose that's a great testimony to the people at creation.com since they published an article about the CMBR dipole anisotropy in 2006. On the other hand, it's sad more people don't know about it.

As far as a trap I don't think that's the case. This is a real issue (for an unbounded view anyway) and the creation article predates his by 3 years.

 

[Barbarian]

That article explains the anisotropy, but it didn't even address the dipole anisotropy. The issue isn't the irregularities, the issue is those "irregularities" are not randomly aligned. If those irregularities were random there would be no special place in the universe. But they actually line up to form a plane, dipole anisotropy is the issue. Not only do these large scale irregularities line up but their axis is lined up with our solar system, thus the axis of evil.

Whenever something like that happens, the odds are that there's something caused by frame of reference. And yes, there's something here:

This figure shows the COBE DMR micorwave map of the sky in Galactic coordinates. To first order the sky is extremely uniform. The color scale on this figure is designed to show the variation (-3.5 to +3.5 mK) at the part in about one thousand level of the 2.728 K. The first-order anisotropy is very apparent and dominates the figure. Galactic emission shows up as a thin band and bumps along the central horizontal of the figure. That Galactic emission is why this map is in Galactic coordinates - to make it easier for the viewer to separate the dipole and the Galactic emission...
We attribute the dipole anisotropy to the motion of the Earth and Solar System relative to the universal CMB radiation field and thus the distant matter in the Universe. This would seem to violate the postulates of Galilean and Special Relativity but there is a preferred frame in which the expansion of the Universe looks most simple. That frame is the average rest frame of the matter and CMB and from that frame the expansion is essentially isotropic.

The motion of an observer means that photons arriving from the direction of motion are boosted in energy. Those from behind lose energy. An like a car driving in the rain, more rain falls on the front winshield than the rear window. In its full form this is called the Doppler effect. The motion of an observer with velocity v relative to an isotropic blackbody of temperature To produces a Doppler-shifted temperature

T( theta ) = To ( 1 + (v/c) cos( theta ) + 0.5 (v/c)^2 cos( 2 theta ) + ... )

where theta is the angle between the direction of observation and the direction of motion. This formula predicts a uniform background at temperature To which has superimposed upon it a dipole anisotropy [cos( theta )] with amplitude (v/c)To. The next term is down by another factor of (v/c). Since the observed variation is roughly one part in a thousand, it meas the observer is moving with v/c = 10^{-3} or about a thousandth of the speed of light. That corresponds to a velocity of 300 kilometers per second or 1,080,000 kilometers per hour... A big question at the time was what was causing that motion? A proposed answer was it was the effect of the gravitational pull of the "Great Attractor". The "Great Attractor" was postulated to explain our motion and its predicted location was near to our Galactic plane so that it would have been obscured by stars and dust. A search was started and as an eventual result it was found that such large clumps of matter as the hypothesized "Great Attractor" are regularly found through the Universe. It is now believed that summing over the mass in our "neighborhood" (within a 100 million light years) one finds the net unbalanced attraction that explains our motion as detected in this experiment. The CMB is then the standard frame of reference for cosmolgy work.
http://aether.lbl.gov/www/projects/u2/

This suggests us having a special place in the universe.

Or the local group of galaxies is moving with regard to the average rest frame of matter in the universe. One of those.

The evidence is consistent with a bounded (distinct edge and center) model of the universe but creates fatal problems for unbounded models.

Since the evidence indicates an unbounded universe of limited size, and since the anisotropy is consistent with motion of the local group of galaxies...

 

[Vaccine]

Assuming the dipole anisotropy were attributed to the motion of local galaxies, it only explains 1 axis. The other axis 90 degrees, as well as the quadrupole and octupole anisotropy aren't explained by that motion. The latest studies have eliminated local that as a possibility:

"It clearly indicates the presence of an intrinsic dipole anisotropy which cannot be explained in terms of local motion."
http://arxiv-web1.library.cornell.edu/pdf/1307.1947.pdf

"The results obtained by suggest the possibility that the Universe may be intrinsically
anisotropic with the preferred axis approximately in the direction of the CMBR dipole.
There already exist considerable evidence in favor of such a hypothesis. The radio
polarization offset angles with respect to the galaxy axis show a dipole anisotropy with
preferred axis closely aligned with CMBR dipole. The Cosmic Microwave Background
Radiation (CMBR) quadrupole and octupole as well as the two point correlations in
the quasar optical polarizations also indicate a preferred axis closely aligned with
CMBR dipole axis."
http://arxiv-web1.library.cornell.edu/pdf/1307.1947.pdf

"Our results suggest that the Universe is intrinsically anisotropic with the axis of anisotropy axis pointing roughly towards the Virgo cluster."
http://arxiv-web1.library.cornell.edu/pdf/1307.1947.pdf

 

[Barbarian]

I wonder what's so critically important in the Virgo Cluster that it centers there.